Heh, I ended up building my comp from scratch. I had to go all the way to Orange County to get the pieces. But all in all I spent under 700 and the result is a better computer I would've ever got for the price.

~$100 going into the OS anyway for pre-built systems. Many amatuer system builders opt for a less-than-lawful OS to save that money and put it into better parts. After all, hardware is (arguably) more important than software.